Chris Mooney

Circa 1996, many of the nation’s intellectuals could be found chattering about the famous “Sokal hoax.” Remember that? It all began when New York University physicist Alan Sokal submitted an article to the left-wing academic journal Social Text that basically amounted to gibberish. It essentially argued that physical reality does not exist: It has […]

On September 26, an event that the national media will surely depict as a new Scopes trial is scheduled to begin. Hearings will commence in a First Amendment lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union against the Dover, Pennsylvania, school district over its decision to introduce “Intelligent Design,” or ID, into its biology curriculum. […]

In with the new blockbusters, same as the old blockbusters. That’s my reaction to the latest summer-movie fare, of which I’ve sampled quite a number of films. I’m certainly not the first to complain about this unimaginative season of remakes, adaptations, and sequels. But as a writer who covers science, I have a slightly different […]

In late July, two seemingly unconnected events transpired within hours of each other. First, President Bush nominated John Roberts, a conservative whose ideology-to-intelligence ratio remains unknown and perhaps unknowable, for the Supreme Court. Second, the American Journal of Public Health released a special supplement issue on scientific evidence and public policy, largely dedicated to excoriating […]

Joe Barton, chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Sherwood Boehlert, chair of the House Science Committee, aren’t exactly known for being the best of pals. Their “rocky relationship,” as one former Capitol Hill science-policy staffer put it, appears to date back to the early 1990s, when Boehlert led the successful opposition to […]

Time was when we just couldn’t hear enough about the wonders of “adult” and umbilical-cord stem-cell research. Whenever the Christian right and its political allies wanted to argue against expanded funding for embryonic stem-cell work, they would quickly cite study of these other types of regenerative cells as an alternative. As recently as the May […]

Following the G8 summit last week in Gleneagles, Scotland, some have tried to spin a clear failure on the issue of climate change into a partial triumph because President George W. Bush was at least forced to acknowledge that the phenomenon is actually happening. The sad truth, unfortunately, is that not even this slim level […]

The Bush administration has been repeatedly criticized for its disdainful approach to scientific information. But Bush’s Republican allies in Congress are at least as empirically challenged as the administration, if not more so. Not only does Congress turn a blind eye when the White House interferes with the activities of scientists in the federal bureaucracy; […]

Given the renewed attention being paid to global warming, it was probably inevitable that, sooner or later, some prominent conservative outlet would arch back its head and emit a barbaric yawp of climate-science skepticism. Forget the fact that virtually every week, new scientific work strengthens the conclusion that humans beings are heating the planet. Basic […]